


Eleven Echoes

by russian_blue



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Betrayal, Character Study, During Canon, F/M, Introspection, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 14:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13101765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/pseuds/russian_blue
Summary: He always knew something was missing. He told himself that, because it was easier that way; everything made more sense if it was there from the start. That feeling of emptiness, of hollowness. Of being less than a complete person.





	Eleven Echoes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shewhoguards](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/gifts).



**1.**

He always knew something was missing. He told himself that, because it was easier that way; everything made more sense if it was there from the start. That feeling of emptiness, of hollowness. Of being less than a complete person.

The family who adopted him from the orphanage thought he was partly Ethiopean or Arabic or something else that wasn't English. That's why they took him in, even though he was such a solemn infant, quiet and staring. Most babies laugh on instinct, but he had to learn how.

He never told them the truth. He hasn't spoken to them at all in over ten years.

 

**2.**

It wasn't any easier in school. He did well enough in classes, his quick mind picking everything up without difficulty, but the other children were more of a problem. He had to learn them, the way he'd learned to laugh. And everyone could see he was adopted; his brown skin and tightly-curled paler hair were nothing like Mr. and Mrs. Roberts. It made him a natural target.

But he didn't cry out when they tormented him. His silence and watchful ways served him well in those instances, depriving the bullies of the reaction they hoped for.

One of them spat as he walked away. "Soulless little beast."

 

**3.**

He was eleven when he learned the truth. Their idea of a little joke.

He didn't know what impulse drove him to walk out of the house at dawn, to board a train and go to central London. When he came out into Covent Garden, he went without hesitation to a nondescript house tucked into a back court. It felt like a magnet pulling him along, like a dream where you do things without knowing why.

He didn't realize until later that he'd left his body tucked up tight in bed.

 

**4.**

It should have been ludicrous. _You were born in another world. We have your soul. You are the property of the Dright._ Utter tosh. It should have been.

But if he hadn't known before, he knew then. The words struck a chord that echoed in all the empty spaces inside him. He was only half a person. A soulless little beast.

"Is it time for me to come home?" he asked. Not because he wanted to leave the Robertses behind, but because maybe then the hollow feeling would go away.

The one who'd been sent to tell him only laughed, a high, cold sound nothing like the laughter he had taught himself. "You will stay here and serve the High Father of the Sept. You have no home."

 

**5.**

For a while he clung to the idea that if he just did well enough, they would let him return to Eleven. And there, maybe, he would belong.

So he studied hard and learned magic, and when he was twenty-one he went to work at Chrestomanci Castle. Gabriel de Witt praised his skill, especially at spirit traveling. No one knew he'd been doing it since he was eleven years old.

Being there changed him. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he no longer saw the hollowness behind his hazel eyes, but the friendly lines around them. The people he worked with taught him to play cricket; they made it easy to laugh. The maids and sorceresses flirted with him.

Rosalie did not.

Rosalie . . . she was everything that felt strange to him about Twelve-A, and everything he wanted to understand. She taught him new things. She argued with him. She played the harp during his trances, and with her music to guide him, he soon came to be the best spirit traveler in the Castle.

She made him want to be whole.

 

**6.**

He still isn't sure whether the Dright had this in mind all along -- if he somehow anticipated the rise of the Wraith -- or whether the High Father of the Sept merely saw an opportunity, and took it.

Because of course de Witt assigned him to hunt the Wraith. They were bringing in contraband from all over the Related Worlds; to catch them, Chrestomanci needed his best spirit traveler. He moved to London, away from Rosalie, closer to the house where he went to make his reports: not the same thing as being closer to Eleven, but it felt like it.

Then he got his new orders. Go to work for the very man he was supposed to be hunting.

Ralph Argent, a thin veneer of charisma over an bottomless well of arrogance and ruthlessness that could match even the Dright's. The Wraith's operation taxed even the capabilities of an experienced spirit traveler. The challenge was . . . almost exhilarating.

He didn't have a choice. He told himself that, because it was easier that way.

 

**7.**

A little boy.

_A little boy._

That was who Ralph Argent sent to meet him. Not a grown nephew, but a child who couldn't be older than eleven, with a head full of loose dark curls and the impression that he was playing some sort of game. The Dright had wanted him to work for the worst man in Twelve-A; if there was one worse, he didn't want to know.

Before they met up in Series Nine, he'd thought about handing the Wraith's new agent over to de Witt. He had to throw the Castle a bone every so often; otherwise they'd get suspicious. But he couldn't sell out a child.

Or the most phenomenal born spirit traveler he'd ever met. Christopher was unlike anyone else: capable of entering other worlds bodily, without a Gate to assist him. No wonder Argent saw potential in the kid.

So he kept going. Running "experiment" after "experiment" with Christopher, helping the Wraith extend its reach beyond even Argent's wildest dreams, and never letting a hint slip to those who would stop it. Through dragons. Through butchered mermaids. Through accidents that stripped life after life from an innocent little boy.

His schoolmate had been right. He was a soulless little beast.

 

**8.**

When it all came crashing down, he would have been relieved.

Except there was de Witt. And Flavian. And Rosalie.

Everyone he knew, everyone he liked, seeing him at last for the traitor he'd become. The hollow shell, animated by other people's orders: Chrestomanci's, the Wraith's, the Dright's. He told them he did it for money, because that was easier than admitting that he didn't know any other way. Didn't know how to choose his own path.

Except that wasn't true anymore. It stopped being true that very day, when he woke up in the Castle and came face-to-face with Christopher, in the flesh. Never mind the Dright, the Wraith, de Witt. _I'm from Eleven, after all,_ he told himself bitterly, and set out to build a fortress of lies that would keep Christopher safe.

Nobody told him to do it. And that was the worst part: because if he could choose his path then, he could have done it all along.

He just hadn't.

 

**9.**

"Tacroy."

His spirit name. Would it have made a difference, if he'd known his own name sooner? Probably not.

But Christopher knew it, and used it to call him. The name didn't have any force; it couldn't compel him to obey. He wasn't following anyone's orders.

He _chose_ to tell the truth.

About Eleven. About the Dright. About himself. It felt like pulling an arrow out of his own flesh, but afterward he could move without the arrowhead scraping against bone.

When Rosalie heard, she didn't look at him. She argued with Christopher, the way she used to argue with him, and when that failed she went and found furs and jewelry so they could at least do this stupid thing right.

And he didn't look at her, because he knew he wasn't coming back.

 

**10.**

Until Christopher claimed him. Mordecai Roberts. Tacroy. His man.

A shapeless blob of silver. That was all it took.

That -- and Christopher's life.

Tacroy should have tried to stop him. But his soul had melted into him, filling out all the hollow places, making him want to laugh and cry and scream all at once, and he didn't realize until it was too late what Christopher was doing. He could only grab the boy as he collapsed and run for the Gate, away from the world that had never been his, the world he no longer wanted any part of.

 

**11.**

The truth is that he tried not to think about any of it.

One thing about him was Eleven to the bone: he lied. Not just to de Witt, not just to Christopher, but to himself. Constantly. Every waking minute, and many sleeping.

After he had his soul back, he couldn't do that anymore. Didn't want to. He had to admit his guilt, and the fact that he had enjoyed quite a lot of it. His friendships, and the way he'd betrayed them. His feeling that he didn't belong, and his desperate wish to do so.

He had to tell Rosalie that he loved her. And then do the harder part, which was mending what he had broken there, when the first rush of joy faded and they both took a good look at everything that had passed between them.

But he wasn't of Eleven anymore. He was Christopher's man -- which meant he was his own man. And what better way to start over than to be honest?

Sometimes, when he was on the World Edge, he caught himself looking in the direction of Eleven. It refused him as fiercely as ever.

Then Tacroy turned his back on it, and went back to earning his redemption.


End file.
